375 The Last Stand

Words : 1623 Updated : Oct 15th, 2025

A few moments before Arthur closed the 'deal' on his side, Shin was currently doing his best to hold himself against Demon. He was trying to lure his opponent on his trap – he even purposely lowered his guard to set up his scheme. Unfortunately, Demon seemed to be quite cautious at their battle. What's more, this guy seemed to also be planning to continue doing this battle of attrition until Shin completely lost the fight. Thinking about that, Shin felt that there was something odd going on with Demon. Normally, an 'Executor Agent' would kill their targets straightforwardly and not with these kinds of cheap tricks. Feeling the oddity of his opponent's movements, Shin decided to activate his 'True Sight' ocular skill on top of his 'Sensing Circle', trying to see what Demon was scheming. After the activation, his eyes glowed with a blue light before scanning his surroundings with it. And the moment his glowing eyes swept the whole field, he saw a bunch of transparent figures scattered in the entire battle arena. Seeing those, Shin suddenly squinted his eyes while muttering with a deep tone. "So, that was it." A moment later, he tried destroying some of those transparent figures by doing a wide swing with his whip sword while making sure that his opponent was not going to notice it. After some tries, he realized that those things were actually clones who were waiting for the right time to strike. What's more, Demon seemed to be running around the whole place earlier so that he could set those odd clones in the whole battle arena. 'Tsk! Looks like I also fell to his scheme,' muttered Shin as he realized that Demon was also actually setting up his own trap. Though, he started grinning the moment he realized that. 'You want to end this with one big move, huh? Let me accompany you then,' thought Shin after making some changes with his plans. Then he waited for a good window to execute that plane while taking down some of the invisible clones in the process. And naturally, he also made sure that Demon would not notice that he was already aware of the latter's setup. But Demon was not an idiot to let Shin destroy the invisible clones that he had scattered around the whole battle arena. Whenever he saw that his clones were about to get destroyed by Shin's attacks, he would immediately divide his thought to control those clones so that they could avoid getting hit. Though, that move also consumed quite a lot of his concentration. Due to that, Demon was now expending more mental concentration than Shin. And the moment he realized that, he knew that he was going to exhaust his concentration first before Shin could even expend his reserves. Reaching this point, Demon decided not to complete the formation that he was setting up and go ahead of his plan. After that, his real body suddenly turned illusionary as if he was an afterimage that was starting to fade away. Seeing all of that, Shin quickly released his 'Mondi's Style' legacy skill and transformed his left-hand sword back to its sheath form before putting the [Yamato] in it. Then he took a deep breath and started taking his sword-drawing stance while sweeping his gaze around to observe the clones surrounding him. There were quite a lot of clones around him right now, he didn't even bother to count them since they were just too many. These clones were like a bunch of monsters eyeing Shin as if he was some kind of prey. The clones looked at Shin for a moment before starting to talk simultaneously. "The time is up, Joker. It is time for your execution." 'Class Fighting Style: (Modified) Demonic Execution' Those close didn't even wait for Shin's reply as they immediately started rushing towards Shin like a pack of wolves that were hunting for their prey. Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! The audience couldn't even see the figures of the clones as they transformed into a bunch of blurs that were moving towards Shin at an extreme speed. Seeing that, Shin started smirking behind his mask while muttering. "Heh! Do you think executing a Joker is that simple?" After that, Shin started focusing his thoughts on the flowing mana inside his body before controlling them according to the flow of the two Internal Qi's of his real body. Due to that, the power of the Sun and Moon started moving towards his dantian and created a sphere with two distinct colors, one was black while the other was silver. These two mana were moving in a circular motion which created a spiraling energy. This was not the first time that Shin had used this method since he also used this method when utilizing the real Power of Eclipse before. So, he didn't have much trouble at controlling the flow of mana inside his body. After that, he gathered the Power of Eclipse towards his sheathed sword before drawing it with an extreme speed. Shing! Right after pulling the sword out, Shin went along with the momentum of his sword-drawing motion and swung the [Yamato] sideways while releasing the accumulated Powers of Eclipse at the same time. Roar! The released energies immediately transformed into a furious dragon that seemed to be planning to devour everything on its path. 'Class Fighting Style: Eclipse Dragon Draw' After being released, Shin controlled the energy dragon and made it circle around him while destroying all of the clones that it was passing through. But despite having a lot of clones being destroyed, there were still many of them that managed to survive and were still rushing towards him. But Shin was also not done yet. He immediately gathered the residual Power of Eclipse that he released earlier and channeled them towards his sword. And when the accumulation of powers reached its peak, he quickly swung the [Yamato] widely while jumping in the air and turning his body around at the same time. 'Slayer Skill: (Mutated) Eclipse Slash' Swoosh! Due to Shin's movements, the energy wave that was released by the [Yamato] drew a huge arc in the air instead of traveling in a straight line. And with that, another batch of incoming clones were destroyed before they could even get near to Shin. But there were still a lot of them left. After all, the range of that 'Eclipse Slash' was still limited. So, all of the clones on the outer circle of Shin's attack managed to survive. Though, Shin immediately followed that attack with another. After throwing that energy wave, Shin quickly raised the [Yamato] in the air while chanting out some words. He waited for all of the clones to enter the five-meter radius range away from him before powerfully swinging his sword downwards. Then in the next instant, another area surrounding Shin suddenly lit up with a blinding light followed by a bunch of pillars of lights falling down from the sky, striking every clone that entered the range of his skill. 'Self-Created Skill (Personalized): Eclipse Shower' Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Bang! Bang! Bang! All of the clones inside the range of that skill were immediately obliterated after getting hit by those falling pillars of light. Though, there were still a bunch of clones that were still alive since they were out of range of that skill. But before those clones could even make their next moves, a flash of silver light suddenly broke from the curtain made by the pillars of light and all of them in half. 'Self-Created Skill (Personalized): Full-Moon Slash' Swoosh! After all of that, the number of clones left behind were cut down to five greatly limiting their numbers. And naturally, they were going to immediately sprint towards Shin due to that spit-second opening that they had. And this time, they were planning to take him down as soon as possible. Though, it was easier to say than done. When Shin saw them, he quickly calmed down his mind and entered the 'White Dawn Boundary' once again – before waving the [Yamato] in circular motion and deflecting the incoming spear from his front. At the same time, he redirected that spear towards his right where another clone was thrusting its spear towards him. Clang! After making those two spears collide with each other, Shin quickly did a quick spin while leaning his body backwards, dodging another attack from behind. At the same time, he was also swinging his sword while doing another spin after dodging that attack. He then jumped in the air while maintaining his spinning motion before throwing a slash at the back of the same clone who was brushing past him from behind. And that very clone was slammed on the ground due to that sudden attack. But it looks like Shin was not satisfied yet as he did another rolling spin in the air before slamming his sword at the clones back, impaling it on the ground and killing it in the process. Those series of movements from Shin were too fast to the point where the other clones didn't have enough time to react. In fact, the first two clones who arrived earlier, were still brushing past Shin when he executed that clone – while the other two clones were just about to reach him at that time. Meanwhile, Shin quickly pulled his sword up before hopping away from that spot to create some space between him and the other clones. He swept his gaze at them for a moment before muttering to himself. "One down, four more to go." ...…

375 The Last Stand

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